Review of Honeyland

Honeyland is about a woman who searches for beehives on cliffs and in hollowed-out areas of trees in the isolated Macedonian valley where she lives, collects the bees, takes them home, and eventually takes the train into Skopje - the capital of Macedonia - to try to sell the honey. She takes care of her elderly mother as well. One day a large family of nomads drive into the valley. They bring their cattle, and they also bring their bees. They settle down right by where the bee woman lives. As you can imagine, feathers are ruffled. But both parties are civil to each other despite voices being raised. In one scene, the father nomad decides to burn down a big old tree so he can plant some corn, which he needs to feed his cattle. The bee woman is livid about that as she watches the tree burn. Father nomad says something like, "OK, you take care of my children and I promise not to burn any more trees."

Two common scenes in the film are people biting into honeycombs, and people blowing smoke onto bees.

I loved the close-up scenes of the bees....for example, after a rain there's a close-up of bees struggling to get out of the water and onto a leaf.

Hope you get to bee it. I mean see it.

~ Leonard